Update (5/21/20): If you are planning to have a wedding in Oregon in 2020, this article will likely be more useful for you.
Before we begin, I want to acknowledge however you might be feeling right now.
As a wedding planner, I’m actively working with couples who are having to decide, right now in this moment, whether to reschedule or cancel their weddings. The responses to this extremely challenging choice vary. Some couples say they feel relieved or resigned. Others: guilty, angry, frustrated. Usually, I find that it’s some combination of all of the above.
Those responses are valid. It’s OK to feel sad about your wedding.
But we’re not talking just about that today. We’re talking about how to know if you should even consider rescheduling or canceling your wedding because of COVID-19 (coronavirus).
Here is my imperfect advice based on what I am personally sharing with my clients. This advice may very well not apply to your situation, whether because you have lots of guests traveling for your wedding, your contracts say something different, and/or you’re just over it.
Wherever you’re at, I hope this helps. And no matter what: The best advice is to know what’s legally allowed by your local government and also medically safe. That information, more than anything else, will inform the question of whether you should reschedule or cancel your wedding because of COVID-19.
Trends that I’m seeing
These days, I’m working about two months out. My June couples rescheduled or canceled in April. My July couples, in late April/early May. And, as of this writing in early May, August has started brainstorming contingency plans with September and October likely to do the same over the course of May and throughout June.
This makes sense to my planner brain and jives with the advice I’ve given my clients: A good date to keep in mind as an absolute go, no-go day is 60 days out from your wedding.
I recommend this number because 60 days out is often when final payments start coming due. It’s also close enough to a wedding that you probably have a decent idea of what the immediate future looks like but also far enough away that you, your guests, and your vendors have time to adapt.
I say 60 days and want to note that for a lot of couples, 60 days might be the final deadline but they’re actively talking about backup plans long beforehand and may want to decide long before 60 days just to get some sense of clarity. Good. Keep talking. This choice might take a few conversations. It might change as the news changes, too.
That said, if you’re already fielding a lot of “Should I come to your wedding/book a hotel room/buy a flight?” questions from your guests, consider sharing a temporary message with them. Here are templates for this type of message. There’s one for what to say if you have no idea what to say right now.
Should I reschedule or cancel?
You may have come across #postponedontcancel as related to wedding planning. The charitable angle on this hashtag is that it’s wedding professionals advising couples that if they cancel their wedding, they will for sure lose money but if they postpone their wedding, they won’t lose money (or, at least, not as much).
As a fellow wedding vendor, small business owner, and person who frequently reads the fine print of wedding-related contracts, I acknowledge this reality. As a human being, I want to say that it’s not my choice to make. It’s your choice to make as a couple.
Like all things wedding planning, deciding whether to reschedule or cancel is very much choose-your-own-adventure. Consult your contracts. Consider your own bandwidth. Talk to each other.
There is no right or wrong. There is only the two of you and how you want to move forward together. (And if you read that and are like “Great but also, help!” email me: elisabeth@elisabethkramer.com)
Am I missing all the “good” days?
This is the other fear that I’m most often hearing from couples: “By delaying the decision to reschedule or cancel, am I missing all the ‘good’ days to get married in 2021?”
The concern here is that all the weddings that were supposed to have happened this year have picked up and moved to 2020.
From my small corner of the universe, this is true — sorta. I have more weddings on the books for next year than I’ve ever historically had at this time of the current year. That said, I have also, to date, helped reschedule three weddings where all of the vendors were available for the new date, all of which happen to be Saturdays in 2021.
Three weddings is not all weddings but I share that example to help fight the (I believe unnecessary added) stress of “Am I missing all the ‘good’ days?”
If you and your partner have a very particular date you want to get married on, are having a wedding at a very exclusive and/or popular wedding venue, and/or have another particular requirement on which the joy you will feel at your wedding hinges, then, by all means, expedite your decision to reschedule or cancel.
If you don’t? Please don’t overcomplicate an already complicated choice by bullying yourself into hitting an arbitrary deadline. You’ve got enough to deal with.
So, now what?
There is so much more I could write here about the morass of feelings and logistics that is changing your wedding plans. I’m actively publishing new articles to answer many of the questions that I’m getting; those are here with this list of resources likely of most interest.
No matter what though, I want you and your partner to know one thing: If you two still want to get married, even after all of the everything, that is the win. It sounds stupid to say and probably hurts to hear because true love’s nice and all but also? You would really like to have the wedding that you’ve spent X months and X dollars planning.
I know and that sucks.
But keep going.
You’re doing a good job.